Dominik Stefanowicz

Patent Trials and Appeals BoardMar 23, 2020

14930703 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 23, 2020)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www.uspto.gov APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 14/930,703 11/03/2015 Dominik Stefanowicz FTS.11-00859 1617 79326 7590 03/23/2020 Fujitsu Technology & Business of America 2318 Mill Road, Suite 1420 Alexandria, VA 22314 EXAMINER TSUI, DANIEL D ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2132 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/23/2020 ELECTRONIC Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address(es): eoamule@system.foundationip.com fpc-mailroom@us.fujitsu.com tiep.nguyen@us.fujitsu.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte DOMINIK STEFANOWICZ Appeal 2019-000651 Application 14/930,703 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before DEBRA K. STEPHENS, JEFFREY S. SMITH, and KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, Administrative Patent Judges. SZPONDOWSKI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1–6 and 10–12, constituting the only claims currently pending in the application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. 1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Fujitsu Technology Solutions Intellectual Property GMBH. Appeal Br. 3. Appeal 2019-000651 Application 14/930,703 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant’s invention generally relates to methods of restoring data from at least two tapes of a tape storage system. Spec. ¶ 1. Claims 1 and 3, reproduced below, are representative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method of restoring data, stored in data blocks, each data block comprising a logical volume of a tape storage system, from at least two tapes of the tape storage system, a first tape comprising a first set of logical volumes and a second set of logical volumes in a first order and a second tape comprising the first set of logical volumes and the second set of logical volumes in a second order, the second order being different from the first order, the method comprising: restoring the first set of logical volumes from the first tape; and restoring the second set of logical volumes simultaneously from the second tape. 3. A method of storing data on at least two tapes of a tape storage system for redundant data storage, the data being split into data blocks, each data block comprising a logical volume of the tape storage system, the method comprising: writing a first set of the logical volumes and a second set of the logical volumes on a first tape, based on a first order; and writing the first set of the logical volumes and the second set of the logical volumes on a second tape, based on a second order, the second order being different from the first order. Appeal Br. 19, 20 (Claims Appendix). Appeal 2019-000651 Application 14/930,703 3 REJECTIONS Claims 1–6 and 10–12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Amundson et al. (US 6,154,852; issued Nov. 28, 2000) (“Amundson”) and Shanbhag et al. (US 2014/0304470 A1; published Oct. 9, 2014) (“Shanbhag”). ANALYSIS The Examiner relies on Shanbhag to teach or suggest a first tape comprising a first set of logical volumes and a second set of logical volumes in a first order and a second tape comprising the first set of logical volumes and the second set of logical volumes in a second order, the second order being different from the first order and on Amundson for the remaining limitations recited in independent claim 1. Final Act. 2–3. The Examiner makes similar findings with respect to independent claim 3. Id. at 4. The Examiner then concludes: [i]t would have been obvious at the time the application was filed to a person of ordinary skill in the art to apply the reverse mirroring layout of Shanbhag to the parallel tape backup system of Amundson in order to provide mirrored backup storage with faster access speed for data blocks further from the beginning of the first order. Id. at 3. Appellant argues “the combination of the tape storage system of Amundson with the RAID [Redundant Array of Independent Disks] storage system of Shanbhag is improper because the system according to Amundson would be modified unsatisfactory for its intended purpose.” Appeal Br. 13 (emphasis omitted). Specifically, Appellant argues the combination would Appeal 2019-000651 Application 14/930,703 4 result in Amundson’s load balancer being “absolutely unnecessary and the entire method of storing data on the parallel tapes in data segments . . . is meaningless,” thereby frustrating the purpose of Amundson. Id. Appellant additionally argues Amundson’s load balancing, according to which small data objects are grouped and written to a single tape device and large objects are split into data segments and are spread across multiple tape devices, would be completely pointless in a redundant storage system, in which all data are stored on all storage devices, as it is taught by Shanbhag. Id. at 14. Appellant further argues the combination is “based on impermissible hindsight, gleaning the subject-matter of a redundant tape storage system solely from the Applicant’s specification.” Reply Br. 3. We are not persuaded by Appellant’s arguments. Amundson is generally directed to a data backup and recovery system that uses a plurality of tape drives in parallel. Amundson Abstract. Amundson also describes a dynamic load balancer that dynamically balances the load between the plurality of tape drives while saving backup data. Id. The Examiner proposes a modification to Amundson to implement both load-balancing and mirroring in Amundson’s system through the use of an original and a mirrored drive, not by replacing Amundson’s load-balancing tapes in order to turn them into mirroring tapes, as Appellant argues (see Reply Br. 2–3). Ans. 3–4. We agree with the Examiner’s reasoning that a redundant storage system would not render load balancing irrelevant, as they are directed to different concepts that solve different problems. Id. Regarding Appellant’s hindsight argument, we determine Appellant has not identified any knowledge relied upon by the Examiner that was Appeal 2019-000651 Application 14/930,703 5 gleaned only from Appellant's disclosure and that was not otherwise within the level of ordinary skill in the art at the time of application filing. See In re McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 1395 (CCPA 1971). In particular, we find Shanbhag is directed to reducing the time required to read from a disk through the use of reverse mirroring. Shanbhag ¶¶ 2, 10, 12. We agree with the Examiner that one of ordinary skill in the art, with knowledge of such a system, would have found it obvious to further provide data mirroring for a tape drive, as in Amundson, in order to provide data redundancy and improve the reading speed of the tape set. See Ans. 4; Final Act. 3. Appellant has not provided persuasive evidence that combining the respective teachings of the references as described by the Examiner would have been “uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art,” or that such a combination would have “represented an unobvious step over the prior art.” Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir. 2007). Appellant further argues Amundson “explicitly teaches away from redundant storage systems.” Appeal Br. 14. Specifically, Appellant argues in Amundson, the data to be stored are spread across a plurality of tape drives in order to balance the load of data, which contradicts a redundant storing of data. Id. Appellant’s argument is not persuasive. A reference teaches away from a claimed invention if it “criticize[s], discredit[s], or otherwise discourage[s]” modifying the reference to arrive at the claimed invention. In re Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195, 1201 (Fed. Cir. 2004). Appellant has not identified where Amundson criticizes, discredits, or others discourages the modification to arrive at the claimed invention. As discussed above, we Appeal 2019-000651 Application 14/930,703 6 agree with the Examiner that load balancing and reverse mirroring are directed to different concepts that solve different problems, and the combination as proposed by the Examiner individually mirrors each tape drive in Amundson. See Ans. 3–4. Appellant further argues that tape storage systems of Amundson and the disk storage systems of Shanghag “relate to fundamentally different technologies,” and, therefore, “[a] person skilled in the art would not consider combining features of prior art documents which relate to such entirely different technologies.” Appeal Br. 15. Specifically, Appellant argues tape storage systems only allow sequential access to data, whereas, disk storage systems allow random access to data which is a fundamentally different concept to accessing data. Id. at 15–16. Appellant further argues that tape storage stores data in logical volumes, which allows for variable storage, whereas disk storage stores in disk sectors, which is fixed. Id. at 16. Appellant additionally argues that because access times for disk storage only amount to milliseconds, a person of ordinary skill in the art would neglect such prior art because such times are absolutely insignificant with respect to the access times of a tape storage system. Reply Br. 4. We do not find this argument persuasive for the reasons set forth by the Examiner. Ans. 4–5. Specifically, we do not find it persuasive that a person of ordinary skill in the art would “neglect” prior art applicable to disk storage systems when considering problems encountered in tape storage systems. We agree with the Examiner that there are similar problems in both with respect to getting the head or spindle positioned in the appropriate position to read data that can be solved with the reverse mirroring technique disclosed in Shanbhag. See id. at 4. Appeal 2019-000651 Application 14/930,703 7 Accordingly, we are not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claims 1 and 3 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), and for the same reasons, dependent claims 2, 4–6, and 10–12, which were not separately argued. CONCLUSION In summary: Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1–6, 10– 12 103(a) Amundson, Shanbhag 1–6, 10– 12 Overall Outcome 1–6, 10– 12 No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED